That was last Wednesday afternoon, as Tiger Woods’ swing coach was taking a shuttle from Ridgewood Country Club to an off-site parking lot. Foley had been asked by The Post about the circling critics who were quick to criticize his teaching of Woods.

With Woods at home, having not qualified for the FedEx Cup playoffs and having withdrawn from consideration for next month’s Ryder Cup, Foley was wearing a bull’s-eye for blame.

“Listen, man,” he said, in his cool and casual demeanor, “it’s still better than waiting tables.”

Woods’ announcement Monday morning that he was ending his professional relationship with Foley — news broken by the message-controlling Woods on his own website — was the seemingly inevitable break to a widening gap that had been hinted at for a while. All it took was looking at Woods’ swing, and then asking Foley what he was teaching, to know things were not all that pleasant.

“Everything is cool,” Foley said via text message to The Post on Monday afternoon.

Foley began working with Woods in August 2010, making their first public appearance at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits. Woods, now 38, racked up eight PGA Tour wins while under Foley’s tutelage — none this season, when he played in seven events, after five wins last season. And yet none of those wins were major championships, the most meaningful achievements in Woods’ eyes.

The last of Woods’ 14 career majors came at the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, in his native Southern California, where he played 91 holes on a partially broken leg. He is currently recovering from microdiscectomy back surgery, which had him hobbled at the PGA Championship three weeks ago, when he missed the cut for just the fourth time in a major as a professional.

As for a new coach, Woods might be doing it on his own for a while.

“Presently, I do not have a coach, and there is no timetable for hiring one,” he wrote on his website.

Woods has done this before, going almost a full year without a coach after his break with his previous coach, Hank Haney. Before Haney, Woods was with Butch Harmon, who rebuilt his swing after Woods’ iconic win at the 1997 Masters.

“I’d like to thank Sean for his help as my coach and for his friendship,” Woods wrote. “Sean is one of the outstanding coaches in golf today, and I know he will continue to be successful with the players working with him. With my next tournament not until my World Challenge event at Isleworth in Orlando [in December], this is the right time to end our professional relationship.”

Also on Woods’ website was a short statement from Foley.

“My time spent with Tiger is one of the highlights of my career so far, and I am appreciative of the many experiences we shared together,” Foley wrote. “It was a lifelong ambition of mine to teach the best player of all time in our sport. I am both grateful for the things we had the opportunity to learn from one another, as well as the enduring friendship we have built. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him.”

Foley had one of his students, Hunter Mahan, go out this weekend and put on a ball-striking clinic at The Barclays, winning his first PGA Tour event in almost 2 ½ years with a final-round 6-under 65. Earlier in the week, Mahan was adamant in his support of Foley in the face of the criticism.

“It’s comical, and [critics] most likely are people that have no idea who Sean Foley is and what he’s doing,” Mahan said Thursday. “And obviously, no one knows Tiger, so you’re not going to get anything there.

“It frustrates me and kind of angers me a little bit. But you know, that’s the world we live in and that’s just kind of the way things are, and Foley is better for it because he can handle a guy like Tiger. A lot comes with that and I think he’s done a pretty good job of containing himself and not letting it bother him. He just does his job every day and does it better than anyone.”